This Summer
by thiskindalove
Summary: When Roxas’ parents told him that he was going to be shipped off to the middle of Iowa for the next ten weeks, he just stared at them like they were crazy.


**Author's Notes:** So, this past summer, I moved from Ireland to Scotland, leaving myself unemployed and bored. After a drought that lasted since January 2009, I sat and I wrote this piece of crap in two days - roughly 5,000 words per day. I've basically been editing it since then, because I have a terrible habit of switching tenses without realising it, and this is, to the best of my knowledge, the best version, haha. It does still switch tenses or whatever, but at this point, I really just don't care, and I want to have it published, out of my hair.

**Warnings etc:** Axel/Roxas, non-graphic sex scenes, some bad language peppered through the prose and the vocabulary, and basic crappiness of writing. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

**Etcetera:** Axel and Roxas belong to Disney Squenix, etc. I do not, and have never, laid claim to them, although I really wish I could. THIS PAIRING WOULD BE CANON IF I OWNED THE CHARACTERS.

When Roxas' parents told him, aged 17 and hoping that he was going to have a growth spurt this summer like he'd been hoping he'd have for the past two summers, that he was going to be shipped off to the middle of Iowa for the next ten weeks, he just stared at them like they were crazy.

Then there were the tantrums. Great noisy things the neighbours a half mile down the road could hear. Roxas, throwing his Playstation at the wall. Roxas, throwing eggs from out of the carton at his parents before throwing the carton because all the eggs were gone.

Roxas, knowing why they were doing it, but never really _understanding_. They thought that his friendship with Sora was wrong. They thought that sending him out to do some honest "manly" work, as they called it, would knock the gay out of him. Send him to Iowa. Send him to a farm to sweat and work the land, deal with the harvest and the corn. That'd set him straight, pun entirely intended.

But Roxas, picking up an ear of corn from the fridge and throwing it with a precise, steady hand, at his father's laptop and lodging it firmly through the screen, only knew that they were splitting up he and his best friend - not just his best friend from _school_, but his best friend, ever, _period_ - for the _whole fucking summer_. The summer where they'd celebrate their sixteenth birthday on the same day. The summer where they were supposed to get a new car, the same fucking red sports car, and drive around the city like they owned the place. The summer they were supposed to really make out with a girl for the first time.

Or, as Roxas often thought, the summer where they'd finally get around to telling one another what they both knew anyway. The summer where they'd both admit that they were crazy for each other, that they'd been crazy for each other since Sora first kissed Roxas' cheek when they were five years old.

They'd never been apart. Every summer, every birthday had been spent together. Even the year that Sora's parents took him to Paris for the week, Roxas had convinced his parents to send him, too, because it wasn't going to be a proper birthday without Sora. They'd sent him, and they'd laughed when he'd come back wearing a beret over his crazy blond hair, talking in a bad French accent.

"_Parlez-vous français?_" he'd asked, and when his parents replied that yes, they spoke French, very well thank you, Roxas had given them a look that would have wilted lesser parents, and stormed into his room.

Now, this summer, they told him that he's being shipped off to Iowa, to some fucking farm to break his back for a pittance and some "experience", as they called it. Something to help him grow into his too-big hands and his too-big feet. Cornfeed him for a summer and he'll hit the growth spurt.

Even Sora's parents agreed that it would be a good idea.

So Sora was being sent to Europe again; Greece, this time, to visit the Parthenon and to learn Greek, to eat Greek food, to meet Greek girls. To hope, like he has done for these past two summers, that he'd hit a growth spurt and be able to try out for their high school's basketball team next season.

Roxas didn't want to go to Iowa. Roxas wanted to go with Sora, to Greece. To spend a summer in the Greek sun, ignoring all the Greek girls - and Greek boys, for that matter - in favour of his best friend.

Roxas had never hated his parents more.

-

Standing at the airport in the chilly morning, Roxas and Sora standing five feet and three-and-a-half inches precisely in stocking feet, both with crazy hair that defied gravity at every turn and eyes that were blue like the sky or the ocean, clinging to one another like the world was going to end, and they were Ground Zero, the beginning of the end, promised to write to each other every day.

(Sora said he'd write in Greek, and Roxas promised that he'd twist Sora's balls off if he had to use a translator beyond "Best Friend to English" to read his letters.)

Roxas waited in the car until the plane was taking off, even although it was a three-hour wait; Sora always insisted on being earlier than Roxas insisted, for _everything_, because God forbid he miss the flight and have to stay in San Diego for the summer without his best friend, but he talked to Sora until he heard a flight attendant come up and tell him that he had to turn the phone off because the plane doors were closed and they were ready for take-off.

Roxas told Sora, as they always did, that he loved him, he'd talk to him soon.

Then he hung up, turned the fucking phone off, and he cried for an hour, listening to the playlist on his iPod that they'd made last summer. "Roxas and Sora's Best Summer Mix EVAR," it proclaimed. They'd had a crazy time last summer, just spending a week in Disneyworld, enjoying the sunshine in Florida, the humidity and the chlorine because all they did was spend the day in the pool or in Blizzard Beach, one day alone spent wandering around the Magic Kingdom.

When Roxas was through with the crying, when his head hurt from it and he'd wiped his face, he drove back home. He was tempted not to do it at all. He was tempted to take the passport from his glove compartment and just hop of the next flight to Athens and spend the summer, broke and starving, with Sora.

But he didn't.

He drove back home, went into his house, slammed the front door and went to his room. His bags were already packed, on his bed. One rucksack, one suitcase, one picnic basket with food enough for the trip. One bag of soda and water. One for dirty laundry. Three days ahead of him of driving through the middle of nowhere to _get_ to the middle of fucking nowhere. He hated his parents.

He double-checked that he had the charger for his iPod. If he had to go that long without music, on his own, he'd scream.

It took him two trips to get all his shit into the bed of the truck, the food and water on the floor in front of the spare seat. He didn't even say goodbye to his parents; they were off somewhere, anyway, seeing friends or something and not giving a shit about him, as usual.

By the time he was halfway to Las Vegas, he could have sworn that he was in hell already. Nobody sitting in the cab with him, making stupid jokes, pointing out stupid place names, flicking the iPod's music like he'd been taking speed and had never seen an mp3 player before. He missed Sora like a physical presence. Missed the heat at his right arm, because Sora always sat on his right in the truck. Always sat on his right in the cafeteria. Even in McDonald's, they'd do it unintentionally. Sora on his right. His right-hand man, Sora'd once said, and they'd laughed, but they were the only ones, because they were the only ones who _realised_ this weird habit they had.

He pulled onto the side of the I15, flicking on the warning lights, and pulled his phone out of the glove compartment, pushed the button to call his uncle's brother-in-law, the guy who owned the farm, and waited.

And waited.

He gave up after twenty minutes of trying to get someone to answer. His parents had been the ones to call the guy after his uncle gave them the number. The farm was in the middle of nowhere, Roxas assumed. He had directions. He had the phone number. He had the note that said "call them when you're on the way, sweetheart!" from his mother, scrunched in a ball and tossed out of the window another mile up the road when nobody answered, _again_, and Roxas was half tempted to turn the truck around and head home, or just stop in Vegas and lose his money at the slots, but he didn't.

Well, he didn't lose all his money. Roxas, unnaturally lucky, stopped at Vegas for a hotel for the night after six hours of driving, called room service, was tempted to call in an escort, too, but he was asleep before midnight and awake again at 5am to spend most of the next day driving.

The further he got from California, the better he started to feel. The further from his parents and the closer to Iowa, the closer he was geographically to Sora. His parents had sworn blind that there was a phone that'd allow him international calls, but only after his work was done for the day. Only after he'd eaten supper.

Cornbread, stew, chicken. Good, wholesome food. No McDonald's for a good mile or two. They'd been tempted to send him by plane to make sure he didn't have the truck, but Roxas _insisted_ on driving. They didn't know about his fake ID. Didn't know about the plans to stop in Vegas. Didn't know that he'd planned to skip the fucking country and join Sora.

He wasn't even sure why he didn't. Wasn't sure why he was still on the I15 (no, wait, the 76 now? When did that happen?) heading north-east. Wasn't sure why he didn't just pull off the road, sling his rucksack on his shoulder and hitch a ride to anywhere-but-heres-ville. Wasn't sure, but he just sort of figured... Sora was in a different country. Sora was on a different _continent_. What would be the point, if Sora wasn't here with him?

So he just focused on driving. Focused on not driving the truck into oncoming traffic just for the fun of it. When lunch time came around, he stopped and he ate a day-old sandwich on rye bread with dry chicken and mayonnaise, drank half of a bottle of lukewarm water. When it came to dinner time, he pulled over and ate a day-and-a-half old sandwich on malt bread with pastrami and turkey, some paté he never really liked but it was better than mayo in this case, and drank most of a litre of Diet Coke that wasn't even fizzy any more.

When it came to eleven at night, he pulled into a run-down motel somwhere on the Kansas-Nebraska state line and went shopping at an all-night mini-mart, the kind his parents would never be caught dead in. He bought fresh water, fresh soda, fresh ready-made sandwiches and some of the pastry things that were sold cheap because they'd been baked earlier that morning, and he went back to the motel and turned the TV on to cover the sounds of the guy and girl next door having really noisy sex, and was awake again at 6am when the national morning news came on, talking about rising floodwater in Texas or something, was back on the road by 7am after a breakfast of rubbery eggs and salty bacon, a cup of coffee that tasted like cigarette smoke or worse, his stuff thrown into the spare seat of the cab and a moment of wondering where the fuck Sora was before he remembered, oh, yeah. Sora wasn't here. Sora was in _Greece_, probably having the fucking time of his life already while Roxas was somewhere near Fucking Dead and Hell in Nebraska.

After nearly four hours of driving down the I80, he pulled over and ate lunch, sick of the sight of green fields and fucking farmland already. He wasn't a farm boy. He was a Big City boy, preferring skate parks to tractors. He liked his corn freshly steamed with a knob of butter, not hanging on stalks, waiting to be picked. He'd prefer to work a McJob than drive noisy farm machinery and chase after pigs or whatever.

He still hadn't been able to get a hold of his uncle's brother-in-law to tell him he'd be at the stupid farm by the end of the day. Hadn't been able to get a hold of them earlier, or yesterday, or the day before that. He'd even tried calling them from a payphone in Vegas, in case they were screening their calls and knew Roxas' cellphone number.

So he didn't try to call them again.

-

After he passed through the last remaining skitters of Des Moines, when it's much later in the day and the sun has started to sink, he's sick of listening to he and Sora's summer mix, because it's just depressing now and he's switched to something _else_, something different. Something that doesn't make him think of Sora and how much fun he must be having, because Roxas certainly isn't having any fun. But the green outside has turned to gold: the city trailed off into occasional farmhouses, all set way back off the roads, fields of wheat and corn all around them. All around _him_.

When he reached the town of Huxley, which is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it town if ever Roxas had seen one, and he kept driving until the farmhouse appeared off the side of the road like all the others, so that he had to pull into dirt path and kick up clouds of dry dirt the colour of the fields around the house, had to back into the driveway beside another truck that's deceptively clean. It's the same colour as the ground, though, so Roxas is pretty sure he could lick his finger and write "CLEAN ME" in big letters along the side and he wouldn't be at all surprised to find a blue or red truck underneath.

But he doesn't.

He left his shit in the truck, on the bed or in the cab, and climbed the three steps to the front porch, the kind that goes right around the house with the balcony of the second floor doing the same, and rang the bell.

After ten minutes, after nobody has answered and he'd gotten sick of the echo of silence through the farmhouse, he rang the bell again, five times in quick succession, and it echoed through the house, too. Empty.

There's nobody home, he thought, and then realised that somebody _had_ to be home, because there's a truck in the drive and space for another, which he's taking up, and so he went and sat in the cab with the window down, his iPod blaring out the new Green Day album, waiting for someone to come home.

In the middle of eating a mini-mart sandwich, with a can of warm Diet Coke open on his knee, when he heard tires crunching on the gravel and dirt, a horn blaring when they find Roxas in the space they'd left.

Roxas got out of the truck, leaving the can resting on the dashboard and the sandwich half-eaten on Sora's seat, and raised an eyebrow.

He'd never met his uncle's brother-in-law. Had no idea what the guy looked like, but he's pretty sure that the guy leaning on his horn, a red-headed punk wannabe with a beaten up Chevrolet truck, is _not_ his uncle's brother-in-law.

"You mind telling me what you're doing in my space?" the redhead asked, sticking his head out of a hole in the door where Roxas is pretty sure there hasn't been a window for at least a decade. "I was only gone three fucking hours."

Roxas raised an eyebrow at the guy in the truck.

"I'm supposed to be spending the summer here," he said, trying to be heard over the noise of the Chevy, as the guy behind the wheel drove it up the grass verge opposite Roxas' own truck - the only fucking grass in sight, as far as Roxas could tell - and got out of the truck, turning it off only after the door was closed.

He leaned against the truck for a second with the casual, lanky grace that only a young adult could pull off. A guy who'd only just reached his full height, right on the edge of adulthood but not quite there yet. A boy with hair like fire that defied gravity more than he and Sora's hair combined and eyes like emeralds, a frame that meant he worked out but never enough to show that he really cared.

"I'm supposed to be spending the summer here," Roxas repeated, and the guy shrugged. "Are you my uncle's brother-in-law?"

The guy shrugged again.

"I'm just the guy who's looking after this place for the summer. House-sitting or whatever."

Roxas stared in a way that would scare most people.

"Where's my uncle's brother-in-law? Where's the guy that owns this place?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the redhead, who casually lit a cigarette he'd pulled from, apparently, nowhere, before he headed back towards the farmhouse.

"Just dropped him at the airport. Something about spending the summer in London."

Another shrug from too-pale, too-skinny shoulders, and he flicked the mostly unfinished cigarette into a bucket beside the front door.

"Like I give a shit. I got a sweet-assed job here. Parties whenever I want. A shop in town that can't tell a fake ID when it bites them in the ass so I can buy as much beer as I want. Out in the ass-end of nowhere."

He turned and gave Roxas a grin that Roxas is pretty sure the guy used when he wanted chicks to fall at his feet.

"And a little punk from San Diego who's supposed to work the fields for the summer. What else could a guy want?"

Roxas just watched as the guy walked into the house. The door had been unlocked the whole time, apparently, and who was to know? The nearest house was a mile away. Huxley was a mile beyond that, and the entire fucking town of Huxley was only about a mile long anyway.

He found himself tempted, again, to just take the truck and leave. To get in the truck, put his foot to the floor, and get the fuck out of the country. iPod on full until he reached Des Moines International, hopped a plane bound for Rome, Paris, Stockholm.

Amsterdam.

Wherever.

But he didn't do it. Didn't throw a tantrum. Didn't throw _anything_. Just picked his stuff up from the bed of the truck, locking the doors after winding up the windows. Dragged it all inside, and found a bedroom on the ground floor near the kitchen. Threw his stuff on the bed when he realised there weren't any family pictures around to claim the room as their own. A letter on the mail shelf beside the front door with "Roxis" marked on the front in red ink.

An apology. They'd decided to go away for the summer to get away from the heat, grab a show or two in London, see Britain. Whatever. They'd found a guy online who wanted to look after the house, keep it clean for the summer.

His name was Axel, and he'd probably already be there by the time you arrived, sorry about the last-minute thing, hope you enjoy your summer. Say hi to your Uncle for us, will you?

He crumpled the letter in his hand and tossed it in the trash can under the window before he headed into the kitchen.

"My name is Roxas," he said, before opening the huge fridge-freezer, finding both stocked to overflowing. "I've never worked a fucking cornfield before in my life, and I have no idea where to start. What about you, Axel?"

The redhead was by the back door, smoking another cigarette, and Roxas could see another one at his feet, ground into the porch by the heel of Axel's boot.

"Well, Roxas," Axel said, not at all surprised that Roxas knew his name, or if he was, he never showed it, "you'd better find a book, because I've never worked a cornfield in my life, either, and it's not my job. I've just got to make sure the house is spotless before they get back in September."

He gave Roxas another grin, took one last drag on his cigarette and stubbed this one on the doorjamb, dropped the butt to the porch and closed the back door.

"I'm taking upstairs. And I mean the whole of the upstairs. The balcony, the bedrooms, the bathroom. Don't come up. I'll kick your short ass back downstairs faster than you could blink."

Charming, Roxas thought as the redhead left the kitchen, booted feet clomping upstairs, leaving a path of dusty footprints behind him, leaving Roxas standing alone in the kitchen to contemplate what to have for dinner.

-

Roxas didn't really see Axel again until the next day when they were both down in the kitchen for breakfast, when Axel was being sort-of friendly, making French Toast and links, crispy bacon and tomatoes, mushrooms, hash browns.

Turns out he could cook, although you wouldn't think he could, considering the fact that it looked like he didn't fucking _eat_, but the food was good, hot, and they didn't even talk as Roxas made them both coffee, Axel adding a swish of something from a hip flask to his own, and Roxas spent the time reading a book he'd found on one of the shelves in the den about how to tend a cornfield..

By the time the afternoon came around, read pretty much everything he needed to know about growing corn, but he wouldn't really need to do anything until the corn was ready, which wouldn't be for another few weeks at least, so he spent the time listening to his iPod, reading the books he'd brought, watching Axel disappear upstairs and reappear in various stages of undress to lie in the sun with stupidly large sunglasses on, his ear buds never out, so he never spoke to Roxas.

Even when they shared breakfast, they never spoke. Roxas always had his nose in a book, and Axel always had his nose in a griddle pan or the toaster, or he was too busy shovelling food into his mouth like it was going to run out.

For the first two weeks, they never even said a word to one another beyond, "Hey." Beyond spending time together at the breakfast table, they never even really _saw_ one another; both obviously more than a little sociopathic, and Roxas missing Sora terribly, writing every other day and driving down to Huxley to mail the letter because he wasn't sure that the mailman even came out this far; there never seemed to be any mail delivered, after all.

So when Axel knocked on his bedroom door sometime into the third week when Roxas was lying in his bed with his feet higher than his head, reading a copy of Mother Earth News from six years ago, Roxas looked at Axel upside-down with a look you'd normally reserve for something growing in the crisper drawer.

"Thinking about throwing a party. D'you prefer beer or liquor?"

Roxas just sort of stared at him for a minute.

"Beer it is, then," Axel said when it was obvious that Roxas wasn't going to reply, and walked away. A minute later, he heard the truck roar to life, and he could still hear it when it was five minutes down the road, too.

Roxas put the magazine down and swung his legs around, sitting still as the blood rushed to his head, as he stared at the space in his door where the redhead had been.

Throwing a party, he'd said. For whom? Roxas was three days away from home, and he didn't even _know_ where Axel was from; he'd never said. Roxas had never asked.

It hadn't occurred to him that he actually _cared_ about the fact that they'd barely spoken more than three words to one another. He was sharing a house with this guy - or, well. This guy was living upstairs and he had to share his downstairs with him. He'd walked out of the bathroom one day with a towel over his hair and one around his waist, to find Axel sitting on the stairs beside the front door, smoking another cigarette, his eyes looking over Roxas like he was going to be served for lunch.

The look, Roxas had thought when he was safely back in the bedroom, had been _hungry_. He'd never had someone look at him like that. Had never had a _girl_ look at him like that, let alone a guy several years older than him. Let alone a guy he didn't even know.

Let alone _anyone_, or any_thing_.

He'd stayed in his room for the rest of the day until he heard Axel's music click off upstairs, then sneaked into the kitchen for food, only to find a plate covered over, with a note that simply said, "Enjoy. - Axel" and it had been cornbread and sweetcorn and chicken and whipped potatoes with chives and garlic and cream that Roxas could have easily eaten with every meal for the rest of his life.

When he'd turned around, Axel was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, watching him eating, and had gone upstairs when Roxas had seen him, barely able to breathe.

Roxas didn't know what to think of the redhead.

But he sat on the island in the kitchen when Axel had come back from the beer run, his feet swinging loose over the ends, watching Axel prepare some kind of fluffy pizza with all different kinds of sides, from yellow rice and black beans to a five-star banoffee dessert, covered in whipped cream.

"So you're a chef?" Roxas asked him, and Axel looked back over his shoulder, his finger in his mouth, tasting the potatoes, and he shook his head. "Where are you from?"

Licking his lips, Axel turned away from the stove, looking at Roxas sitting on the island, and walked towards him, reaching around behind him for a beer he could have easily reached by walking _around_ the island, bringing his face so close to Roxas' that Roxas could smell the alcohol on his breath.

"Why'd you care?"

Roxas didn't say anything until Axel had backed off, taking a swig of the beer and turned back to the stove, stirring some butter and cream into the potatoes.

"We just. We're spending the summer here together. I don't even know your surname."

He heard Axel snort.

"And I don't know yours. What's your point?"

Roxas was the one to shrug this time, even although Axel couldn't see the motion. "I just want to know."

"Set the table, would you?" Axel said, more telling than asking, and Roxas obliged, but only because Axel was nice enough to make dinner for them. Enough dinner for them and sixteen other guests.

"When's the party starting?" Roxas asked as he set the cutlery down, turning to watch Axel come towards him with the pan of potatoes.

"It's already started, sweetheart. Don't you see the food and the beer?"

On his way back to the stove, he even put a _cassette_ into an antiquated boombox and hit play.

"Can't you hear the music?"

Axel grinned as he served the rest of the food, amused at something only he understood, and all Roxas could do was sit and watch him. The dessert was set in the middle of the table, the food laid out in case they wanted seconds or thirds, and they ate in silence, except for the music, until side one clicked off and Axel never turned it over.

When the food was gone, Roxas watched the redhead walk to the back porch, pulling a cigarette from the seemingly never-ending supply in his jeans pocket and settle into one of the well-worn sofas with a beer in his other hand.

Roxas started tidying up, like he usually did, and stopped when Axel called in through the back door, "Well, you coming out here or not? And bring me a beer if you do. And one for yourself."

They were barely cold; the fridge has been well-stocked, still, and they'd only been in for three hours or so, but he left Axel's on the arm of his sofa, and settled himself onto the swing opposite, holding the beer in his hand, but not opening it.

"So, kid, you had questions."

Roxas looked up at Axel, watched the smoke circle his head, watched the end flare briefly with every inhalation before it dimmed again.

"How old are you?"

Axel raised an eyebrow and grinned. "Twenty. Almost twenty-one. You?"

Roxas tried to unscrew the top of the beer and Axel laughed, flipping him a bottle opener on a set of keys. Roxas, blushing, opened the bottle and tossed them back.

"Almost eighteen."

Axel's eyebrow was still raised, and he gave Roxas that hungry look again, the one that started from the tips of his toes and continued to the tips of his gravity-defying hair.

"And you're from California. Hell, that should mean you're pretty experienced in just about everything, am I right? And yet you didn't know it wasn't a screw-top beer."

Axel's grin wasn't predatory right now. It was friendly, wide. Rows of perfect white teeth behind stretched-thin lips.

"I'm only seventeen, you asshole. I don't drink. Usually." Roxas took a swig from the bottle, and when he didn't find it the most disgusting thing in the world, he took another. "I'm from San Diego. I'm in high school. I'm single, I'm a Leo, my best friend is spending the fucking summer in fucking _Greece_, and I'm stuck here with a complete stranger who sometimes looks like he wants to eat me, so excuse me if I didn't notice it was a fucking proper bottle-top."

Axel chewed on his lip for a minute, and they sat in silence again, but Axel still had an annoying smirk on his face like he knew something that Roxas didn't, and it's only after the sun goes down and Axel's bottles have been empty for two hours and Roxas hasn't even half-finished his warm beer that Axel gets up, to head inside.

He even ruffled Roxas' hair on the way past.

"I'm from Hawai'i," Axel said, but he'd already gone upstairs when Roxas looked around to make sure that he had heard him correctly.

-

Axel throws another party for them the next week, a month before Roxas' eighteenth birthday, saying that it's _his_ birthday today, and instead of beer, he brings back two bottles of tequila. Limes. A couple dozen packets of cheese and sour cream flavour potato chips and two jars of ranch dip.

They sit out on the back porch in the dying heat of the evening, Roxas getting sicker by the minute with the mixture of too much good fucking cornbred hick food and too much fucking tequila, too much dip and too few chips, and they spend the next two hours with Roxas bent over the toilet bowl throwing everything back up before Axel hands him a glass of water, strokes his hair, and when Roxas has rinsed his mouth out, spit it into the toilet bowl full of sick and bits of lime, Axel leans in, presses Roxas back against the wall and kisses him like he's the hottest thing this side of New Mexico while Roxas tries desperately not to vomit again.

I doesn't even know how to kiss, he thinks dimly in the back of his mind as Axel's tongue slides into his mouth, and all he can think is that he hopes he doesn't still taste like vomit.

-

He doesn't see Axel for two days after Axel's "birthday", because the redhead fucks off into Des Moines for something, leaving Roxas alone with his iPod, a field of corn to be checked for plumpness and milky discharge, weird gray-ish worms under the eaves of the corn and thoughts of Axel's mouth on his when he should be sleeping, hand curled around his cock in a way that he knows most people would frown upon, but he doesn't give a shit. Nobody out here to hear the way he muffles the moans of Axel's name into the meat of his own arm when he comes.

After two days alone, two days of listening to Green Day and Something Corporate, Evanescence and any other shit he wanted at full fucking volume with nobody to complain, Roxas doesn't hear Axel coming home over the sound of his teenage-emo-rock-band shit music, until the volume clicks off and Roxas' heart jumps into his mouth and he turns around from where he was dancing with the mop.

"Didn't know you were a dancer," Axel says, and giving Roxas another one of those looks, the kind meant for the chicks Axel wants to bed, but he's only given it to this blond little _boy_ since he's come here. Roxas just watches in shock as the redhead holds out a small paper bag, drops it into his small hands, walks past him into the kitchen with another brown bag and puts some stuff in the fridge.

"Sorry I was gone so long," he says in the kitchen, Roxas still standing in the hallway like a leper or something, wondering if his legs remember how to move or if he's imagining the memory of being able to do it without thinking. "Got sick of the cornfields, y'know?"

Roxas turned, walking into the kitchen still in a sort of state of shock, and leaned against the island to look at Axel.

"You kissed me," he says, the small paper bag held in his hand without even looking into it.

"Yeah," Axel replies, taking a swig straight from the carton of milk, leaving a white mustache on his top lip. "Yeah, I did, didn't I?"

"Why?" Roxas asks, hoping that if his legs give out that the island will hold him up. "Why then?"

Axel shrugs, and it's not with a deliberate movement anymore; it's sort of sinuous, an extension of his body, his breathing, and he looks at Roxas with hungry eyes.

"D'you want me to do it again?"

Roxas swallows again, hard, his mouth parted slightly, his heart pounding like a jackhammer in his chest, and Axel's mouth's already on his before he can think, before he can breathe, pressing him against the island in the middle of the kitchen, drawing Roxas' legs around his waist, holding him up, kissing him until Roxas draws out of the kiss, gasping for breath with his face flushed and Axel can feel his cock hard beneath the denim of his jeans.

"_Why_?" Roxas asks, his voice shaky and _hoarse_, and Axel shrugs again, keeping his eyes on Roxas' even as the boy's legs are shaking.

"Why not?"

He leaves Roxas sitting on top of the countertop like that, legs dangling, hands holding him up behind himself, watching as Axel walks away, walks upstairs, leaves him in the chill of the kitchen with the fridge door still open and the back door open, the sound of the swish of the cornfields the only noise in the kitchen besides the pounding of Roxas' heart and his harsh, ragged breathing.

He doesn't even look to see what's in the paper bag. Puts it in the fridge, closes the doors, and slides under the sheets of his bed without even taking his shoes off.

-

When he wakes up the next morning, it's to the sound of Axel's truck sputtering away from the house again, and he gets up, running fingers through his hair to find a note stuck on his bedroom mirror that simply says, "Back before dark," and he's thankful for that, but he puts his music on, earbuds in, and makes his way out to the fields, checking the ears of corn, but none of them are quite ripe yet, except for three at the front of the field, probably a few of the first planted or tended or whatever, and he takes them into the kitchen, sets a pan to boiling, has himself a lunch of sweet corn with butter and a glass of milk before he starts cleaning the house with his music on because there's nothing else to do.

No more books left to read.

No alarmingly attractive redhead to distract him.

He finds himself sitting on the porch swing out front when Axel comes back later that night, a parcel under one arm and a pack of Corona in the other, raised an eyebrow at Roxas as he passes by in a way that's probably construed as flirty in any other part of the world, but mostly it just looks like Axel has a tick, as Roxas follows him inside, curious.

"You're from Hawai'i," Roxas says, watching Axel put the beer and the parcel in the fridge, never even caring enough to turn on the goddamn house lights like he can see in the dark with his green cats' eyes or something, and he just shrugs, maybe nodding a little, closing the fridge again to cut off the light.

"Yeah."

"Why Iowa? Why here? Why this farm, this summer?"

Another shrug, a long, graceful body leaning against the countertop, and Roxas standing in the arch of the doorway in the darkness, the moon the only light around here, illuminating the cornfield beyond the porch.

"Why not?" Axel responds, like that's the only good explanation for _anything_, ever, and strolls lazily past Roxas, long fingers touching his arm, and Roxas notices for the first time, without need for shock or surprise, that Axel's skin's so warm that it feels like he's running a fever. "It's turned out well so far, hasn't it?"

Roxas doesn't turn. Doesn't say anything. Stands in the doorway between the hallway and the kitchen, dumbstruck and dumbfounded, unsure of everything that he's ever known, because he's in the middle of the fucking prairie with a redhead like something out of one of his most erotic nightmares, with moonlight shining on eaves of corn, and he slams the back door shut, closing out the light, and strips his clothes before climbing into bed, jerking off to the thought of Axel's casual graceful shrug, his mint-green eyes, the heat of his skin.

_Hawai'i._

-

For the next week, Roxas goes to the cornfield every day to check the ripeness of the corn, finding a few more eaves that are ripe enough to pick, but he leaves them until there are more, until there's any point to it, and he spends his time on the back porch, his earbuds in so he doesn't hear Axel's truck leaving him every day, hoping that when Axel's upstairs, that he can't hear Roxas downstairs, in bed, either crying or moaning Axel's name as he spills come across his hand and stomach.

-

A week before Roxas' eighteenth birthday, Axel doesn't leave during the day. He stays in the kitchen, cooking and pottering around, watching Roxas in the field, pressing kernels of corn beneath a long, blunt fingernail that's got dirt permanently engrained under it now, preparing dinner and trying to keep his mind on the food and nothing else.

When Roxas comes in, it's to the smell of garlic and chive whipped potatoes, a lemon and herb chicken roast, more fucking corn than he can ever stand to look at again and a whole medley of green, orange and red vegetables, salad, and a goddamned apple cobbler for dessert, which Axel assures him was baked with his own fair hand, but Roxas is so fucking hungry that he couldn't care if Axel had shit the thing out, so long as it tasted as good as it smelled.

"I came here because I wanted to spend the summer somewhere quiet where I could get wasted and nobody cared," Axel admits halfway through a mouthful of potato, his tongue rolling around the whipped white mess, bits of green stuck in his teeth that he sucks out with the tip of his tongue once he's swallowed. "Needed to get away from my parents. They're fucking hippies."

Roxas looks up from his half-finished meal, looking at Axel in a way that screams that he's confused, where the fuck did the conversation come from? How does Axel remember these fucking things? but he just quirks his head a little to the side.

"Hippies?"

Axel nods, another fork of potato in his mouth already, and he waits until he's swallowed it this time before he starts to talk.

"Free peace and love and shit like that. Communing with nature. Sitting in the middle of a fucking forest, talking to plants. I can't stand any of it. Living in a commune with no electricity? Smoking weed but not drinking alcohol? Fuck _that_ noise."

Roxas snorts, shaking his head.

"So you came to Iowa instead. Great plan."

"Hey, it was all expenses paid. I didn't have to drive for three fucking days to get here. I was a couple hours on a couple of airplanes, a taxi and a truck ride to the airport to drop them off. I've got it sweet, and nobody minds how drunk I get."

"_I_ do."

Axel's the one to snort this time, standing up to clear the plates they've finished with, serving the cobbler with Jack Daniels cream, Roxas wrinkling his nose at the smell of it, but when he tastes it, it's not so bad.

"Yeah, but you're not my mother, and you did pretty well with that tequila," Axel says, and laughs. "Well. Until we reached that whole bathroom stage."

Roxas wrinkles his nose again, just at the memory of it.

"And you fucking _kissed_ me."

Axel grins this time, his spoon pulling up more cobbler than should be physically possible, shovelling it into his mouth, not saying anything in reply to that, just licking his lips once he's swallowed, and Roxas _knows_ he's not licking his lips because of the food.

"And I did it again. And I'll do it again, if you want me to."

Roxas' breath catches, his heart skipping a beat, and he pushes away from the table, his face flushed and his body tingling with the thought of it. He makes his way out to the porch, the corner of the house where it's brightest in the dark, leaning with both hands against the railing.

He hears Axel's footsteps follow him out, and he realises just then that Axel stopped smoking at some point and he never noticed.

"My parents sent me here to make me a man or something," Roxas says, licking his lips, hands tight on the railing. "Because of the way I feel about my best friend."

Axel's body's close enough to Roxas' that Roxas can feel the heat rolling off of him in waves, his skin prickling, gooseflesh and every hair on his body on end.

"And how do you feel about your friend?" Axel asks. "Was it a boy?"

Roxas lowers his voice, tone low and worried. He hasn't thought about Sora in a while. Neither of them have written much, of course, after that first week, or if Sora has, then Roxas has never gotten the letters. But when he thinks about him now, it's a sharp ache in his chest.

"Yeah, it's a boy. He kissed me when I was five. He's just. He's my best friend. We were born on the same day. He's in Greece this summer, and I was sent here, because our parents think it'll stop me being gay or something."

Axel's hand comes to rest on Roxas' shoulder, drawing the blond boy back against him, and Roxas leans back gratefully, turning his face against the warmth of Axel's arm.

"And now you're here. With me," Axel says, his voice low and hoarse, an edge of something dark wrapping around it, his hand splayed over the beat of Roxas' heart. "Oh, what irony is this."

Roxas drops his head back, against Axel's chest, and Axel presses him forward a little, against the railing, and Roxas' skin tingles again until he turns, finding himself pressed flush against Axel's chest, his arms around bony hips, clinging tightly to the dark of Axel's shirt.

"And now I'm here. With you," Roxas replies, and when he finally dares to look up, he finds Axel looking down at him with eyes darker than pine trees.

But Axel doesn't kiss him this time, as much as Roxas knows he wants to. He can see it in Axel's eyes.

"You're only seventeen," Axel breathes as their lips come close so fucking close to touching again, and he backs up slowly, leaving Roxas pressed against the corner of the railing as Axel goes into the kitchen, the sound of clomping boots up the stairs, and Roxas sinks to the floor until it's cold enough to make him shiver, when he drags himself up, climbs into bed with all his clothes on, dreaming of hair like fire and eyes like leaves, a mouth opened on an 'oh', and when he wakes in the morning, he finds his underpants sticky with the tell-tale signs of countless wet dreams during the night.

-

The day before Roxas' birthday, Axel disappears again, the sound of the truck revving waking Roxas just before noon. Roxas gets up, takes a cold shower to get rid of the remnants of his dreams like he's been doing for a month now, just holding his face under the spray until the cold wipes away the memory of the heat of Axel's body against his own.

He dries and dresses for the day in the field, because the corn's almost ready and he's spending every day now out among the eaves, in the avenues of corn, checking every thirtieth ear he comes across, and they'll be ready probably when Roxas is ready to leave, but some of them are ready now, and he'll do what he can before he goes.

When it comes to mid-afternoon and Roxas is sitting alone in the kitchen with another copy of Mother Earth News from a decade ago at the side of a bowl of clam chowder from a can, he hears Axel's truck roaring up onto the grass verge, hears Axel slamming the front door and doesn't look up from the pages as Axel comes into the kitchen with both arms full of groceries.

"So, I figured I'd throw you a party," Axel says as though Roxas isn't completely ignoring his presence and hasn't been doing the same thing for the past week. "You know. Balloons. I'll bake a cake. Make a whole buffet table thing. Music. Dancing.

"Celebrating.

"You know the drill, right?"

Roxas continues to ignore Axel, and Axel, completely oblivious or uncaring of the fact that Roxas isn't listening, continues to restock the fridge, throwing out the four-week-old kale that neither of them could figure out a use for, the two-week old carton of apple-mango concentrate juice that neither of them _liked_, and the cornbread that they both loved but couldn't eat more than a slice of at a time because Axel in all his wisdom had decided to put Jack D in the damned thing, because Axel thought that alcohol made everything better.

When Axel's taking out the trash, Roxas stands from the table, pushing his chair back under, and goes to put the book away on the shelf where he found it, only to find Axel standing in the shade of the door, watching him.

"It's almost midnight."

Roxas gives him a look that he reserves for his parents, and rolls his eyes, turning away in silence.

"Why are you ignoring me?"

Roxas puts the book away, and turns to find Axel standing right behind him.

"You've been ignoring me for a week."

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath for a moment, Roxas brushes past Axel, going to the back porch to sit and watch the moonlight on the corn before he goes to bed. He likes the silence, the peace of it all. After a lifetime spent in San Diego, he misses the ocean, but he thinks that, when the breeze is just right, the rustling of the stalks sounds almost like the hiss of waves.

"Why are you ignoring me?" Axel asks, leaning against the door to the kitchen again, watching Roxas with his head against the wall of the house. "What'd I do?"

Roxas swallows hard, breathing through his nose for a second before he finally looks at Axel, although he's not sure if Axel can see the _look_ in his eyes.

"It's not what you _did,_" he says, leaving it open-ended and vaguely dismissive, and he stands, pushing past Axel into the kitchen, with Axel catching his arm and spinning him so they're face to face again.

"What _didn't_ I do, then?" Axel asks, harshly, shouting although neither of them really realises it. "_Why are you punishing me?_"

Roxas' lip trembles, and Axel sees that even in the moonlight, and Roxas' hand against Axel's shoulder is hard, insistent, pushing him away as Roxas turns again, deliberately heading towards the stairs he's never ascended, heading to the top floor, to see where the other half lives, to see the moon from the balcony, Axel be damned.

"Hey! I told you-"

"_FUCK YOU, _Axel. Fuck you! I'm going upstairs. It's my birthday. I've been down here the whole time, and I don't _give a shit_ if you told me not to go upstairs. I want to see over the corn fields. I want to see more of the world than what's at my eye level!"

He's fast. He's upstairs before Axel's even at the bottom of the stairs, storming out onto the balcony, and he stops dead at the sight of the moonlight over the tops of the corn. After so fucking long of looking _up_ at them, here he is, looking down on a sea of sand, moonlight lit and beautiful, and any anger he feels sort of... melts away.

"I've never seen a cornfield before this," Axel's voice drifts from behind the screen door, which squeaks when he opens it slowly, booted feet making a thunking noise as he joins Roxas on the balcony. "That's why I wanted the upstairs. I wanted it to be mine."

Roxas is silent, leaning against the rail around the top of the house, looking out on the fields and the dirt path that he can follow with his eyes until it reaches the horizon and disappears from sight.

"I want to hate you, you know," Roxas whispers, fingers tightening on the wood again, as he feels Axel's body close to his own again, that heat seeping through the chill of the evening, and he shivers when Axel's arms wrap around him.

"I know. I wanted... and I know you did. But I didn't. Couldn't."

Roxas closes his eyes, his heart pounding in his chest and he licks his lips, suddenly too dry in the chilly air, the heat of Axel at his back, and he wraps his arms around Axel's arms, feeling the hardness of Axel's cock pushing into the small of his back.

"It's your birthday, Roxas," Axel whispers, his mouth suddenly, inexplicably, at his ear, breath warm and enticing, pressing a kiss to Roxas' jaw and Roxas melts back against him. "What do you want for a present?"

Roxas swallows, hard, wondering if he remembers how to breathe without thinking about it, and he unwraps Axel's arms from around his chest, turning to lean back against the railing, looking up at the redhead with dark, dark eyes and a pout meant for getting his own way, and Axel drops to his knees, Roxas watching the way he sort of folds himself down, the way he reaches for the waistband of Roxas' denim shorts, ignoring the flaps of the button-down shirt he's wearing and just drawing denim and cotton boxers down Roxas' thighs, nuzzling his nose into the warm flesh of Roxas' hip, into the musk of his pubic hair.

Hot breath on his cock, and Roxas just watches him, licks his lips, slides his fingers into Axel's hair when Axel rocks forward on his knees, taking Roxas' cock into his mouth while Roxas fights not to crumple to the ground, determined not to be a pussy, to stay standing, to keep breathing.

"Oh, god, Axel," he gasps, voice barely a whisper, fingers tightening in Axel's hair as Axel's fingertips brush over his balls and Roxas lets out a whimper, a keening gasp as he feels the head of his cock brush the back of Axel's throat, the way it tightens around him when Axel swallows.

And Roxas, eighteen years and five minutes old, tightens his fingers in Axel's hair, gasping for air.

"I'm- fuck, Axel, I'm gonna-"

And Roxas doesn't _really_ panic, but his fingers in Axel's hair get really tight and he pulls him back, not wanting to come in his mouth, not wanting to force Axel to do that, but he doesn't pull out quick enough.

Axel doesn't draw his mouth away fast enough, instead sucking it until he pulls off with a wet pop, a slick sound and Roxas can't fucking help it as he splashes long, thick globs of come onto Axel's cheeks, and Axel, shocked as hell and looking up at Roxas, bathed in moonlight, gets to his feet, presses Roxas back against the railing and kisses him until there's come smeared on both their faces, all over Roxas' hands because he cups Axel's cheek at some point he can't remember, until they can't breathe and Roxas is half fucking hard again and Axel's never been harder in his life, and he turns Roxas, pressing him against the railing, pressing him against the pillar at the corner of the balcony and makes him step out of his shorts, leaves him gasping for breath while Axel runs inside, comes back with his boots off and a bottle of lotion and a condom in his hand and Roxas just looks at him with dark, dark eyes in the moonlight.

"I'm only just eighteen," he whispers in between two gasps for air, as Axel presses the lotion into Roxas' hand.

"I think I kind of like you anyway," Axel replies, as close to asking for Roxas' permission as he'll ever get, and Roxas ends up shivering, but not from the cold, when Axel finally presses into him, pushes into his body and his heart, his mind and his soul.

There's nobody around for miles, and when Roxas comes this time, he cries out, no panic, no worry, just riding it out as Axel keeps moving into him, watching the moonlight on the corn as Axel gasps into Roxas' ear, into the sound of the water, thousands of miles from the ocean, and Roxas sinks to his knees with Axel behind him, around him.

"Happy birthday, Roxas," Axel whispers into Roxas' ear, the sound of his own name from Axel's lips more beautiful than the noises he'd made when he came, and Roxas finds himself crying, almost, burying his face against Axel's t-shirt.

They slide down to the balcony together, Axel's warmth wrapped around Roxas, staving off the chill of the night for as long as they can.

"It's late," Roxas eventually whispers, his fingers still curled in Axel's shirt, and he looks up to find the redhead just looking down at him in something that could be awe or wonder, or even _like_, and Roxas' heart skips a beat.

"Yeah," Axel replies after listening to the silence for a minute or two, and stands up, making sure his clothes are all in place, looks at Roxas still sitting in the dust on the balcony with his shorts around his ankles, come soaking the bottom of his button-down shirt, and Axel kneels and picks Roxas up, one hand under his knees, one at the small of his back, because by the end of the summer, he won't be able to; he's already noticed that Roxas has grown three inches since he's been here, growing up and growing muscle, his hands and feet almost the right size for his body now, and Roxas doesn't complain; too sated and boneless, sure he won't be able to harvest the corn tomorrow, if he can walk at all.

*

Roxas doesn't remember falling asleep. Doesn't remember the next two weeks because they pass so fast, but he _does_ remember all the kisses and the way Axel lifts him onto the countertop again and again. Remembers the way his heart skips a beat when Axel looks at him. Remembers the way that Axel watches him, shirtless and sweating as he picks ears of corn from the stalks by hand.

But after all of that, of two weeks of having a boyfriend who likes to fuck him in the kitchen and lick the mess from his stomach, two weeks before he's due to leave, there's a knock at the door just as Axel's tracing an ice cube down Roxas' chin, down his throat, and Roxas wrestles out of Axel's grip, keeping him close behind him as he answers the door to find Sora on the doorstep, all tanned and two inches shorter than Roxas, with a hand behind his head in that way that Roxas knows means, "Hey Rox, missed you," and Roxas' heart ends up in his throat, blocking his ability to speak, and so Axel does it for the two of them.

"Jeez, you two could be twins, if you were blond." Deadpan, unimpressed. Axel knows who the short brunet on the doorstep is even without an introduction.

Axel walks away from the door, leaves Roxas speechless and half-hard from their play in the kitchen, to wrap his arms around Sora, to show him around the house, to give him a bedroom near Roxas', the wrong side of the staircase, keeping Axel between the two of them, and Axel's friendly enough towards Sora, but Roxas is still in shock, so that when Sora claims jetlag and heads to bed in the middle of the afternoon and Axel goes upstairs, Roxas follows him, and Axel fucks Roxas in silence, against the wall because the bed squeaks, and when Roxas comes, he buries his face in Axel's shoulder, mouth open on a silent scream, and when Axel comes, he punches the wall, biting back the moan because of the pain.

*

Roxas spends the next two weeks in the cornfields with Sora, the two crazy-haired boys plucking ripe corn, taking it to the barn with the tractor in it, where the guys will pick it up later in the day and take it to town, do whatever with it, leave the money with Roxas, who'll put it in a tin.

Axel keeps the house clean, because there's only a few days left until it's time to go and pick up Bob and Jane or whatever their names were from the airport, and he can't take Roxas with him then, leaving him in the house with Sora, and his mind plays scenarios of what the brunet will do with the blond, because Sora just keeps on giving Roxas that same look that Axel gave him from the first time he saw him, and Axel wants to punch the short bastard right in his pretty little face, but he doesn't.

Just picks up the farmer and his wife from the airport, gives him the keys back, amazed to find Roxas and Sora on the ground floor with their stuff packed and no shirts on, no tan lines to really speak of on Roxas' bronze skin, and Axel's heart hitches with the thought of having to leave him.

When Bob - that's his name after all - asks if Axel wants a ride back to the airport, Roxas waves it off.

"I'll take him. Sora's got to catch the flight back, anyway," he says, giving Axel a look that's completely unreadable, unknowable, and tosses his things in the bed of the truck, waiting while Roxas gets in the driver's seat with Sora at his right-hand side as always, Axel sitting in truck bed for the hour's trip down to Des Moines, enjoying the heat and wishing he could tell the two teenagers in the cab to shut the fuck up and let him sleep, but he doesn't.

He lies awake in the truck bed, listening to the sound of Roxas' voice, listening to Sora's plans for the last three weeks of summer that mostly include skate parks, teaching Roxas how to flirt in Greek, and, when they're standing at the airport with Axel gathering his things and handing Sora his, Sora's whispered words into Roxas' ear that makes Roxas blush and look at Axel, not Sora.

"I'll see you at home, Rox, yeah?" Sora asks, standing on the tarmac in the warmth of the afternoon sun, and Roxas is beautiful in the sunlight like this, Axel notices, watching the way Roxas smiles, nods, and throws his arms around Sora.

"Yeah," Roxas replies, kissing Sora's cheek, turning away and coming back to Axel, missing the look on Sora's face when Sora goes to kiss Roxas but Roxas doesn't notice.

Sora, blue eyes confused and dark, picks up his things and heads into the airport with his ticket and passport in hand as Roxas comes back to see Axel, standing with his own things.

"I got my ticket home, too, you know," he says to Roxas, who looks up at him - not so much of an up anymore, given that he's grown almost four inches over the summer so far - and Roxas shakes his head.

"I don't want you to go," Roxas says, the most honest thing he's said to Axel since his birthday, most of which has included the words, 'fuck', 'god,' and 'yes' in varying combinations with Axel's name.

"What?" Axel says, affecting a nonchalant tone and pose, every single part of him screaming that he doesn't care, but his eyes say otherwise. "Don't want to go home to your boyfriend?"

Roxas, barely eighteen years old, standing five-foot-seven-and-a-half inches exactly in stocking feet, glad for the growth spurt and the cornfed hick food that Axel's cooked him for the past two and a half months, smiles at the redhead, squinting in the afternoon sun.

"No," he says, and picks Axel's things up off the tarmac, tossing them into the bed of the truck before shoving a map he downloaded from Google into Axel's hand. "Three whole days of you, me, the middle of nowhere and that clichéd open road, with my iPod blaring, stands between Des Moines and San Diego.

"I want to take my boyfriend home with me."

So Axel does the only thing he can really think of. He kisses Roxas like he kissed him that first time: shakingly, gently. Kissing Roxas like he's the hottest thing this side of New Mexico, and watches as Roxas slides into the driver's seat before moving over, to let Axel drive.

To sit at Axel's right-hand side for the rest of the trip home.


End file.
